Bad Breath

[onikenbai 33]

The bad breath is indeed from the body's switch from an ATP-based metabolism to a ketone-based metabolism. It sucks in the short term but it is a good thing! This means your pre-op diet is being followed properly and that your body is being starved of carbs and is consuming the energy stored up in your liver and shrinking it. Often you can also smell the difference when you pee as it will be darker and will have a funky smell. Drink lots of Water and have mints & gum handy to help tackle the bad breath. In the first couple of days of ketosis you will probably have to pee like the dickens because it takes a huge amount of Water to store ketones in the body and when you burn the ketones, you ditch the water. This is also why you tend not to lose weight right after surgery: you're switching back to an ATP-based diet and gaining water weight as you store energy again. So many people get really excited that they're losing huge amounts of weight before the surgery but you have to realise that it's not all fat you're losing so much as water and emergency energy reserves. Don't get discouraged immediately after the surgery when your weight doesn't continue to drop like a rock because you're not gaining back fat, just water and emergency reserves again. Modern man didn't evolve hand in hand with drive-through windows... we need those emergency reserves just in case we have to go out and hunt something to survive (such as an antelope or the perfect pair of shoes).

This assumes you are not diabetic. Ketosis in a diabetic is not so much a good thing as insulin is an important factor in processing ketones. Diabetics need to be under very close medical supervision if they are going to send themselves into ketosis because it can result in some serious medical problems such as the kidneys shutting down. A lot of people who are diabetics and don't know it report having problems with bad breath and the truth is they are sliding into ketosis and can't read the signs. Apparent drunkeness without actually having consumed any alcohol is also a sign of ketosis in a diabetic person and that person needs to be fed.

This concludes your public service announcement on ketosis.